


in confidence

by Ponderosa (ponderosa121)



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e12 Internal Affairs, Families of Choice, Gen, Hallucinations, Malcolm Bright Gets a Hug, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Mental Health Issues, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22488727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: This definitely isn’t the first time he’s lashed out and said something hurtful to Gil. He can fix this.[missing scene for s1e12 Internal Affairs]
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright
Comments: 46
Kudos: 213





	in confidence

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thank yous to mcraider and toriceratops for putting eyes on this and helping me get this finished! Also, hey, a different flavor of pson fic than I usually write.

The moment Malcolm has a name and a few details to go with his profile, he bursts from the interview room with the pill bottle in his hand. Dani intercepts him before he can go two steps, catching his sleeve and tugging him close.

“Bright,” she hisses, her brows knit tight with concern. She immediately shields him from the rest of the room as best she can. “What did you do?”

“I’m fine,” he replies, realizing only as the words fall into the air that he’s answering a question she didn’t ask. He licks his lips and lifts up the bottle he’d pulled from the trash. “This prescription. It’s evidence. I need to talk to Gil.”

“You just took out the power—probably to the whole building,” she says, and he must have pulled a face because her eyebrow wings upward. “Don’t even try to deny it. One look at you and the boss is going to know it was your fault. After what you said to him, you might want to give him some time to cool down.”

He follows Dani’s gaze to where Gil has re-emerged from his office and is busy directing folks to follow procedure and evacuate the building.

“It’s fine,” Malcolm tells her. This definitely isn’t the first time he’s lashed out and said something hurtful to Gil. He can fix this. “And this is more important.”

She doesn’t look convinced, but Malcolm edges past her and with some reluctance she lets him go. He feels her watchful gaze track him as he makes a beeline for Gil, and steels himself for the look that’s going to come his way.

“Bright, for fuck’s sake, I told you to get out of here.” Gil’s expression is pinched, definitely still hostile and, Malcolm guesses, he’s a heartbeat away from stepping back into his office and slamming the door again.

Gil waves away the staff lingering and stretching their ears before rounding on Malcolm. “You just can’t listen, can you? What do I need to do to get you to go home?” he says, clearly struggling to keep his voice down. “Do I need to have Dani drive you again, because this time it won’t be a courtesy. She’s a detective, not a chauffeur. Call a damn car.”

The knot in Malcolm’s stomach twists tighter and tighter, until it’s so dense it might as well have its own gravity. “Gil, I—“

But Gil’s running out of steam, and the look he has leveled at Malcolm shifts from completely fed up to a slowly dawning realization. Eventually he lands at nauseated concern. “It was you. You took out the power,” Gil says, and looks up at the ceiling. “Christ, kid, what were you thinking? Are you trying to get fired?”

“I thought you already did that,” Malcolm says. He glances back towards Dani. She’s taken over shepherding people off the floor and they make eye contact briefly. He nods, trying to telegraph to her that he’s got this.

“Look, Bright—“

“I need to talk to you,” Malcolm says, cutting Gil off and ducking into his office. He starts to flip the blinds. “In confidence.”

“And you thought triggering an evacuation was the best way to get some privacy?”

“Of course not; that was an accident. Sort of.... Gil, I know you’re still mad and I regret what I said, but I need to tell you something important. Hold this, please,” he says, and thrusts the pill bottle at Gil. He closes the door, flips the lock, and turns the blinds there too.

“This is empty.” Gil says, giving it a shake before letting it fall from his grasp to grab hold of Malcolm’s shoulders and spin him around.

A small yelp slips out of him as Gil shoves his back up against the door. The blinds and the window rattle as he’s held there. His mind goes blank for a moment, too startled to do anything but stare as Gil’s hands slide up to frame his face. He’s not afraid— _not of Gil, never of Gil_ —but all the breath in his body leaves him and his focus needles down to the clasp of Gil’s fingers against his jaw. Gil has always been warmly and reassuringly tactile, but he’s never put his hands on Malcolm like this before—forcibly demanding and coached in urgency.

“Malcolm, I need you to tell me what you did, right now,” he says, quietly but firmly.

Malcolm swallows hard, the bob of his throat forcing Gil’s thumbs to dig under his chin. His pulse leaps wildly. It’s clear what Gil is afraid of as he nudges Malcolm’s chin higher, his dark gaze fixing on Malcolm’s to try and gauge his pupils.

“Not that,” Malcolm manages to say. He gathers himself together, or tries to. His gaze slips to the side, his stomach a scattered mix of nervous pins and hopeful sparks. He’d still need to apologize properly, but at least he knows for sure now that he hasn’t done any irreparable damage to his relationship with Gil. “That was the bottle Curtis Marsh threw in the trash. Look at the label.”

“What?”

Gil doesn’t immediately step away or even drop his hands, and Malcolm fights the urge to just lean further into the touch. It’s overwhelming having Gil in his space like this, so close to a hug. A real hug, not a quick pull towards him and a pat on the back. The heat of Gil’s body bleeds into the space between them, chasing away the last of the awful chill that had settled in him when he’d said what he did, and when he’d seen—

Malcolm gnaws at the inside of his lip. “The names on the label. I did a search on the prescribing physician.”

Finally Gil moves, bending down to scoop up the fallen bottle and turn the label towards the faint bit of light coming in from the windows.

“Here,” Malcolm says, fishing out his phone and turning on the flashlight. He shifts a step towards Gil to hold up the light. “Doctor Coppenrath is a—”

“No, I know,” Gil says, frowning. “I’ve seen the name. You’re saying that he’s involved somehow?”

“He’s the real deprogrammer. He fits the profile and if you take into consideration where we found the body…. Marsh would never have chosen to dispose of it there unless he was instructed to,” Malcolm says. He expounds a bit on his logic, enough apparently to convince Gil, who sets the bottle on his desk before turning back to Malcolm.

“So why the secrecy?”

“If I’m right, Coppenrath already knows we’re on to Marsh. We need to pull him into the spotlight.”

“And how exactly are we going to do that?”

Malcolm smiles softly. “You’re going to file an incident report on who was responsible for tonight’s blackout.”

“You want him to assess you?”

“It’s the quickest way to confirm he’s our guy and if it helps us find Andi....”

All of Gil’s simmering anger has receded, and Malcolm sees the last of it fade as his lips firm into a line and he releases a breath in one long exhale. He puts a hand on Malcolm again, and there’s a certain tension in his arm that seems like he’s aching to draw Malcolm to him. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but Malcolm closes his eyes, briefly picturing what it would feel like to be pulled in and held. Guarded. Safe.

“Kid, if I do that, he’s going to pull all of us in: me, Dani, JT, even Edrisa. Everyone who touched this case will be interviewed about your conduct,” Gil says.

Malcolm opens his eyes and lifts his gaze to meet Gil’s. “I know, and everyone is going to have to tell him the truth. Whatever it is. No secrets.”

Gil doesn’t say it aloud, but Malcolm hears it anyway: _What if you’re wrong? And what are you still hiding?_

A pale shadow flickers in the room and Malcolm tries not to look at it. Avoiding it makes it multiply, and he curls his hand into a fist and focuses on the gentle dig of Gil’s fingers into his shoulder.

“You were right to be worried,” Malcolm admits. “I shouldn’t have been on this case and if there are consequences, I’ll face them. But if this helps us find Andi and bring the people responsible for Tristan’s murder to justice, it’ll be worth whatever happens to me.”

“Okay…okay,” Gil says. He steps back and perches himself on the edge of his desk. “But JT and Dani...I can’t send them in there cold.”

“No. The team should know he’s a suspect,” Malcolm says, then pauses and rolls his eyes upward as he considers the scenarios. “Well, maybe don’t tell Edrisa.”

Gil’s mouth quirks.

“Coppenrath won’t be asking the sorts of questions that would give him a reason to interpret their body language as anything other than a general distrust of IA. He’ll also likely assume that any reluctance or hesitation in their responses is there to protect me. ...Presuming, I guess, that they honestly do like me.”

“Of course they like you, Bright.”

He’s not always so sure, but he’s certain that none of them would be unkind.

Gil’s phone buzzes. “It’s JT,” he says, glancing at the text before sliding it back into his pocket. He folds his arms over his chest. “Teams are headed up to sweep each floor top to bottom. Power’s estimated to be back in thirty minutes. Anything else you need to get off your chest?”

There are dozens of things crowded in Malcolm’s throat. Sitting atop it all is what Watkins told him about Martin and the phantom that it spawned, but he can’t say it aloud and make it real with words. And then there’s his newest breed of night terrors: waking up feeling the phantom slide of the knife puncturing into his body, reliving the awful saving grace of the scrape of it glancing off his ribs.

There’s more. So much more.

How he’s never forgiven himself that couldn’t be there for Jackie’s funeral. How thankful he is that Gil hasn’t given up on him yet and how terrified he is that he won’t be able to work again. How very sorry he is for lumping Gil in with Martin and Watkins.

And beneath it all, boiling in the acid of his stomach, is the whisper that even if he regrets saying Gil had a hand in bringing him to this point, he’s also not entirely wrong. He’d needed help– _needs help_ –and he still can’t quite ask for it.

His ten-year-old self stares at him from a space by the door and perched right next to Gil is his current self dressed in institutional white idly tapping a crowbar against its thigh. The curve of his doppelganger’s smile hangs in his peripheral: cherry-red, blood soaked and wild. He refuses to look at either them— _what he was meant to be, what he might become_ —keeps his focus on Gil instead.

“Probably,” Malcolm says, and it’s the most he can force out of the trap of his throat. He struggles to control the cold rushing back into his body and cycles his breath as the sting of tears threaten to spill. He hangs his head, pinching at the bridge of his nose until the sensation passes.

At the quiet rustle of Gil pushing away from the desk, Malcolm glances up. They’re alone again, nothing crowding around them but silence. Malcolm expects him to go to open the door and start everything into motion. Gil grabs the pill bottle and puts it into his pocket and closes the distance between them instead.

He gathers Malcolm into his arms in a tight hug, and for a moment the confusing mix of hurt and anger and sorrow and all the things left unsaid feel like they’re going to spill out of Malcolm, hot and slippery like viscera.

“It’s okay, kid. Later,” Gil promises, holding him until the shaking stops. “How about we head down and get JT and Dani clued in on the need to know. One of them can take you home while I figure out how to message this in a way that isn’t going to get all of us put up for review. Sound like a plan?”

Malcolm draws in a deep, steadying breath. If Coppenrath jumps at the chance to lead the charge for IA, there will still be fallout. If he doesn’t, and Malcolm’s wrong, that fallout will be infinitely worse. No matter what, he’ll need to figure out how to make things well and truly right with Gil, but this, this is everything to him right now–

“It’s a plan,” Malcolm says. He fights the tremble in his voice as he adds: “Thank you for trusting me.”

“Always have and always will, kiddo,” Gil says, finally releasing him and nodding towards the door. “You ready?”

Malcolm might not be fine or even close to admitting that truth aloud, but seeing this case to its end and finding Andi, is one more step towards getting there. And knowing that he’s still loved by the man who deserves to be called his father—maybe it’ll be enough to carry him until he can figure out how to shake these spectres for good.

“Ready.”


End file.
